Memphre
A Magog diver spent 28 years collecting sightings on Lake Memphremagog and would only enter one in his file if the witness signed a declaration or recorded it on tape. He logged over 4,900 dives in the same water and never saw the animal himself.
Field Guide Entry
Ralph Merry IV settled at the outlet of Lake Memphremagog and kept a journal. The 1816 volume, held by the Stanstead Historical Society, records that 8 people had described 14 sightings of a large serpent in the lake to him. That is the earliest written account and it is already secondhand. Merry was writing down what his neighbors told him.
The Stanstead Journal asks
On January 21, 1847, the Stanstead Journal printed a short item stating that a strange animal, something of a sea serpent, existed in the lake, and invited readers who had seen it to come forward. Local papers carried reports through the rest of the century. Newport, Vermont, at the far end of the same lake, claims the same animal under the same name.
Boisvert's rules
Jacques Boisvert was a diver in Magog who began collecting sightings in 1978 and founded the International Dracontology Society of Lake Memphremagog on June 19, 1986. He set one rule that separates his file from most cryptid archives: a sighting went in only if the witness signed a declaration or recorded one on tape. By the time he went public he had 50 sightings from 124 people on those terms.
He also logged over 4,900 dives in the lake between 1978 and his death in 2006 and never reported seeing anything, which he said as plainly as he said everything else. Patricia de Broin Fournier filmed a wake in the summer of 1997 that is still the best known footage.
A mosaiculture Memphre now spouts water in the lakefront park at Magog, planted each spring and lit after dark once the season turns.
Visiting Information
The lakefront park is open through the day and the sculpture stands at the water there. Parking in the Cabana lot is $3 an hour up to a $15 daily maximum, free for permit holders, and the lot closes overnight.
Festival O Memphre runs in May at the neighboring Parc de la Pointe-Merry, and the promenade links the two parks along the shore. That weekend is the one time the town commits fully to the story.
The society keeps its witness declarations online in French, and the Stanstead Historical Society at Rock Island holds the Merry journals for anyone who wants the 1816 entry itself. Magog is about an hour from Montreal and the lake is busy from June through August.
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